One of the boxes I brought up from the basement is a box of 78 records. Do you think these things will be worth anything? Or will I barely make enough to cover shipping costs, to mail these off to some bulk collector?

i had some of them, along with the 33's and my daughter had someone that was a collector review them...and they dont amt to anything...and some of the ones i had you would think they would of...she also had them look at some old piano sheet music...just not much of a call for them i guess...

always best to check you may have that odd one out thats worth a few bucks

I did think about buying a record player, but then that's even more clutter, I'm trying to get rid of stuff!

I want Bob to go through them and see if any are worth anything (by doing ebay searches on each title) but as the steel pile is still in the back yard the chance of this happening is slim. Hmmm. Maybe I should just see what a collector pays for boxes of them. But I hate to miss out if there's a rare gem in there.

I did some searches and it looks like some of these records are worth $20-$30 each so far more than the pile of steel . However, how to demonstrate their level of scratches etc. to the buyers ...

So now I sent Bob out to buy us a record player that plays 78 records, which is apparently fairly rare in our modern world. Then I'll record each one, there's only one song per side. I was going to post those on YouTube so the ebay potential buyers could see exactly what they were like, but I am thinking that would be a copyright violation and could cause problems, even if I'm doing it to demonstrate the quality level. It's odd that I can post tons of photos of the record but not the more important sound quality when trying to sell it. So maybe I'll post the videos on my own site.

It turns out that there's really no difference in posting an audio of a record you own and posting a MP3 you own - i.e. in both cases you are illegally distributing it. I suppose in a way it's like posting the text of a book you own. Yes you own it so you can read it - but you're not allowed to distribute it to the world.

I ended up selling about half of them, even with two auction runs. So the remaining ones, I have to find time to post on my website and see if someone will buy them eventually. I just haven't gotten to doing that ... my backlog is absolutely immense right now.